TIO-SHACL: Comprehensive SHACL validation for TMF Intent Ontologies

2026-04-29

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of formal validation mechanisms in the TM Forum Intent Ontology, which hinders the assurance of correctness prior to network intent submission. The paper presents the first comprehensive SHACL-based validation framework tailored to this ontology, covering all 15 of its modules and enabling automated syntactic and semantic verification. It introduces novel validation patterns—including recursive logical operators, cardinality constraints, and cross-expectation relationships—and constructs a reusable constraint library comprising 25 parameterized SPARQL components. Developed in strict compliance with the SHACL specification, the system is compatible with three major SHACL engines and achieves 100% lexical coverage across 87 classes, 109 properties, and 72 functions. Its accuracy is empirically validated through 133 test cases, and the implementation has been open-sourced.

Abstract

Intent-based networking promises to revolutionize telecommunications network management by enabling operators to specify high-level goals rather than low-level configurations. The TM Forum Intent Ontology (tio) provides a standardized vocabulary for expressing network intents, yet lacks formal validation mechanisms to ensure intent correctness before its admission. We present tio-shacl, the first comprehensive SHACL (Shapes Constraint Language) validation framework for the TMF Intent Ontology. Our contribution includes 56 node shapes and 69 property shapes across all 15 tio v3.6.0 ontology modules, a reusable constraint library with 25 parameterized SPARQL-based constraint components, and novel validation patterns for recursive logical operators, quantity-based constraints, and cross-expectation relationships. We pursued 100% vocabulary coverage (87 classes, 109 properties, 72 functions), cross-implementation compatibility across three major SHACL engines, and validation accuracy on a corpus of 133 test cases. tio-shacl is publicly available under MIT license at https://github.com/EricssonResearch/tio-shacl and enables automated syntactic and semantic validation of network intents, addressing a critical gap in the field.

Problem

• Intent-based networking
• TM Forum Intent Ontology
• SHACL validation
• network intent correctness
• ontology validation

Innovation

• SHACL validation
• Intent-based networking
• TM Forum Intent Ontology
• SPARQL constraints
• semantic validation